Oeke Hoogendijk: The New Rijksmuseum – The Film

Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, directors of the Magnificent7 Festival in Belgrade presents ”The New Rijksmuseum” that will be screened January 30 as the opening film of the festival. The text also includes words from the director:

In 2003, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the most important museum in all of the Netherlands, closed for a major renovation. The plan was to reopen in 2008, but what was to take five years took 10, with a budget that just kept on growing. Filmmaker Oeke Hoogendijk was able to follow this exciting, difficult and sometimes painfully funny process with the camera from behind closed museum doors. In beautiful images supported by powerful music, she captured the building as it was stripped to a bleak carcass, and as it gradually retrieved the old grandeur of yesteryear.

We watch from up close as various curators prepare the layout of their new rooms with tremendous passion and dedication. We follow the caretaker, who looks at the building as if it were his child and protects it against intruders, and the architects who constantly have to adjust their designs. And we follow the museum directors who must deal with financial setbacks, bureaucracy and squabbles – not to mention the activist cyclists. In the end, 400 hours of material was edited down to a single film that takes the viewer to the apotheosis: the reopening in 2013.

This exiting epic documentary took the award for Best Dutch Documentary in 2014 at the IDFA in Amsterdam, after the premiere at festivals and cinemas in USA. In the beginning of December it went in theatres across the Netherlands.

Director’s Word: What should have been a movie about the pride of Holland turned into nothing short of a Shakespearian drama, with failing project managers, cornered ministers and officials, quibbling contractors and foreign contract parties who were appalled to see how the slow decision-making process frustrated the renovations and eventually brought them to a complete halt. It was as if a great weight was pulling the project down and no progress could be made. In 2008, when the management announced that the museum would be closed for another five years, I too realized that I was to spend another five years behind the walls of the Rijksmuseum and witness five more fascinating years of struggle.

The Netherlands 2014, 130 mins.

facebook.com/thenewrijksmuseum

Werner Herzog: Dicta

Mens jeg fortumlet tænker videre over alt det, som skete i mig ved at lytte til de to dages samtale mellem Joshua Oppenheimer og Werner Herzog på Den danske Filmskole for en uge siden, hjælper kollega Tue Steen Müller mig ved at hitte dette blogindlæg fra kottke.org frem. Det kan for mig lige nu fungere som en slags huskeliste (for Herzog vendte ofte tilbage til et eller andet dictum, som han kalder disse sætninger) og dermed mulighed for videre overvejelse for en vigtig del af Herzogs bidrag disse dage. Resten står så tilbage som opgave. Og dertil kommer selvfølgelig især at få orden i tankerne om det, Joshua Oppenheimer sagde. Men altså indtil videre denne blogpost af Jason Kottke (14.januar 2015):

”Paul Cronin’s book of conversations with filmmaker Werner Herzog called ”Werner Herzog – A Guide for the Perplexed”(2014). On the back cover of the book, Herzog offers a list of advice for filmmakers that doubles as general purpose life advice.

1. Always take the initiative.

2. There is nothing wrong with spending a night in jail if it means getting the shot you need.

3. Send out all your dogs and one might return with prey.

4. Never wallow in your troubles; despair must be kept private and brief.

5. Learn to live with your mistakes.

6. Expand your knowledge and understanding of music and literature, old and modern.

7. That roll of unexposed celluloid you have in your hand might be the last in existence, so do something impressive with it.

8. There is never an excuse not to finish a film.

9. Carry bolt cutters everywhere.

10. Thwart institutional cowardice.

11. Ask for forgiveness, not permission.

12. Take your fate into your own hands.

13. Learn to read the inner essence of a landscape.

14. Ignite the fire within and explore unknown territory.

15. Walk straight ahead, never detour.

16. Manoeuvre and mislead, but always deliver.

17. Don’t be fearful of rejection.

18. Develop your own voice.

19. Day one is the point of no return.

20. A badge of honor is to fail a film theory class.

21. Chance is the lifeblood of cinema.

22. Guerrilla tactics are best.

23. Take revenge if need be.

24. Get used to the bear behind you.”

Bloggeren Jason Kottke tilføjer: “I bet this is some of the stuff you learn at Herzog’s Rogue Film School: The Rogue Film School is not for the faint-hearted; it is for those who have travelled on foot, who have worked as bouncers in sex clubs or as wardens in a lunatic asylum, for those who are willing to learn about lockpicking or forging shooting permits in countries not favoring their projects. In short: for those who have a sense of poetry. For those who are pilgrims. For those who can tell a story to four year old children and hold their attention. For those who have a fire burning within. For those who have a dream.” 

Og jeg får lyst til at tilføje, at mine forældres og læreres formaninger og opdragelse ikke altid er moralisme; som regel er det hårdt tilkæmpede personlige erfaringer derude fra virkeligheden. Det er sådan jeg lytter til Herzog, helt ærligt.

Magnificent7 Festival Belgrade 2015

The 11th edition of the Magnificent7 Festival for European feature length documentaries takes off January 30 and continues until February 5. As in previous years filmkommentaren publishes the introduction to the 7 films written by Svetlana and Zoran Popovic. That will start tomorrow. Here follows my introduction to the programme – as member of the selection group together with the Popovic couple:

Can we live without art? Of course not, we do hope that Magnificent7 2015 proves the value of watching film art that gives us something to think about, experiences, joy, maybe sorrow or anger, maybe make us act for change, feel love… the same as wanted Rembrandt and Vermeer and Hals in their time. The three and all the other great artists have for more than a decade been waiting to get a new home as we can see in “The New Rijksmuseum” by Oeke Hoogendijk, a brilliant interpretation of the meeting between art professionals and citizens of Amsterdam, including politicians.

“Messi”… is it good, can we get it? A film about the Argentinian, whose artistic football performances the world has enjoyed. The answer to both questions were affirmative and after a check of an eventual audience interest, the film by Álex de la Iglesia was included in the programme. We hope to see parents take their teenage kids to see their idol on the big screen. A new festival audience!

Another innovation in this year programme is “Virunga” by English Orlando von Einsiedel (executive producer Leonardo DiCaprio!), an activist film that in a powerful language and with brave people on screen makes the appeal to protect the Congolese Virunga National Park.

“You’ve got to have Love for your characters and do everything you can to give them confidence in the job you’ve been assigned…”,says Camilla Nielsson, the director of “Democrats”, a beautifully told observational story from Zimbabwe, where the director sensationally got access to follow two charismatic men, who got the job to put together a new constitution.

The word Love is literally in the title of Finnish Virpi Suutari’s “Garden Lovers”, a film that constantly surprises you with wonderful characters, you laugh, you smile and you are reminded that Love needs to be nursed as the plants in our gardens.

Indeed it does, as does our understanding of human beings, who think and act different than most of us. Portuguese Jorge Pelicano invites us to a hospital with his “Suddenly My Thoughts Halt”, that with humour and original storytelling introduces an actor, who tries to understand and to interpret insanity, helped by the intelligent patients.

French Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard are back at Magnificent7 with “Rules of the Game”, a new social, yes, why not call it “documentary love story”, because that is the feeling that lies deeply in their story about youngsters, who are put in a pretty hopeless training scheme but manage to keep their integrity and own personality.

To the wonderful Belgrade audience: Welcome! 

NB! The facebook page of the festival has for a long time brought not only news for the upcoming festival but has also given a fine flashback to films shown at previous editions of the festivals, including trailers from the films.

https://www.facebook.com/magnificent7festival?fref=nf

http://www.magnificent7festival.org/home.html

Heilbuth og Goetz: Snowdens store flugt

Kvinden på dette still hedder Sarah Harrison. Hun var uden afbrydelse modig lige ved siden af Snowden under hele flugten, sad ved siden af ham i det flere gange dramatisk forsinkede fly fra Hongkong til Moskva. En flue var sluppet ind i kabinen, inden dørene blev lukket, og på et tidspunkt blev den specielt interesseret i Snowden, som nervøs, som han var, efterhånden irriteredes. Med et snuptag i én lynhurtig bevægelse fangede og dræbte Sarah Harrison fluen. ”Du er virkelig en Ninja”, udbrød Snowden med et smil, fortæller John Goetz og Hans Leyendecker i en stor og grundig og velskreven artikel i Süddeutsche Zeitung 10./11. januar i år på baggrund af omfattende og nye interviews med blandt andre, men selvfølgelig vigtigst, de to:

”Er fragt sie: ’Warum hast du alles riskiert, um mir zu helfen?’ Sie antwortet: ’Du wolltest doch Hilfe haben.’ Er: ’Ich habe doch nicht erwartet, dass Wikileaks eine Ninja schicken würde, um mich rauszuholen.’ Beide lachen. Ein paar Minuten später sumt eine Fliege an Harrison vorbei, und sie fängt sie einfach so aus der Luft. ’Du bist wirklich eine Ninja’, ruft er. Scherzen als Ventil.”

Jeg så tv-dokumentaren i forgårs, og jeg havde glædet mig meget, for jeg havde jo læst John Goetzs artikel, hvor han omhyggeligt fortæller hele historien og i sin og Heilbuths tv-dokumentar, ”Jagd auf Snowden”, som filmen hedder på tysk, stiller interviews med alle dramaets hovedpersoner i udsigt: Edward Snowden, Sarah Harrison, Julian Assange, Wikileakschefen og Michael Hayden, den tidligere NSA-chef. Med hensyn til selve handlingsgangen var der således for mig intet nyt, men der var jo disse interviews. Der var mødet med disse mennesker.

Åh, hvor blev jeg skuffet over behandlingen af dette enestående materiale. Det var klippet i stumper og stykker og bliver i filmen næsten kun brugt som replikker i forbindelse med en speak, som polstret med for mig at se helt uinteressante dækbilleder har omdannet hændelsesforløbet til et forsøg på en dokumentarisk thriller, som jeg fra foromtalen som sagt kendte såvel plotpunkter til som slutning på. Jeg har nu kun muligheden at se filmen igen og igen (jeg har anbragt et link nedenfor) og selv i hovedet stykke stumperne sammen til de lange uforstyrrede filmscener, som denne vældige research- og optagelsesindsats og resultatet, interview-skildringerne af disse ganske særlige medvirkende og vidner  fortjener.

Poul-Erik Heilbuth og John Goetz: “Snowdens store flugt” (”Jagd auf Snowden”), Danmark 2014, 58 min. Heilbuth har tidligere lavet “De faldne“(2010) og “Manden som løj verden i krig” (2010)

“Snowdens store flugt” kan ses her, vel nogle dage endnu:

http://www.dr.dk/tv/se/dr1-dokumentaren/dr1-dokumentaren-snowdons-store-flugt

Oscar Nominations for Documentaries

… and for the rest of course, but  let’s focus on the nominees in the documentary feauture, the first mentioned is/are directors, the names that follow are producers: The favourite unique document ”Citizen Four” (photo) (Laura Poitras (dir.), Mathilde Bonnefoy and Dirk Wilutzky), the nice and charming ”Finding Vivian Maier” (John Maloof and Charlie Siskel), the beautiful cinematic ”The Salt of the Earth” (Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado and David Rosier), the powerful activist ”Virunga” (Orlando von Einsiedel and Joanna Natasegara) and one I have not seen, ”Last Days in Vietnam” (Rory Kennedy and Keven McAlester). The audience in Belgrade will have the chance to watch ”Virunga” during the Magnificent7 festival that starts in two weeks.

This came out today, discussions will follow, they already are, especially because the film by Steve James on late film critic Rogert Ebert, ”Life Itself” was not nominated. ”Citizen Four” Laura Poitras – according to Variety – said: “Steve James should have been on this list”. “I’m in shock” .“When his name wasn’t up there, I thought, ‘how is that possible?’ He’s a legend in our field with an incredible body of work. I assumed his film would be nominated, so it’s a bit of a heartbreak.”

For the short documentary nomination – I have only seen one – ”Joanna” by Aneta Kopacz. In October 2013 I wrote this: I watched the film – if you can put it like that – with pleasure and emotionally touched, to say the least, well what else can I say but BEAUTIFUL. As a film and as a hymn to Life and Love, whatever might happen… I cross my fingers for this film February 22nd.

http://oscar.go.com/nominees

Documentaries in Trieste

Trieste – the city of Claudio Magris – still miss a creative documentary on this magnificent author – hosts a fine festival that starts tomorrow January 16th and runs until January 22nd. The documentary programme has quality and is also daring taking off with Romanian ”The Second Game”, a full football game. Here is the description given by the director C. Porumboiu: “This film is a football match, a derby between two Bucharest teams, Steaua and Dinamo, which took place on the 3rd of December, 1988. My father was the referee. We re-watched the match together, some 25 years later.” Writing history in an original way!

This is one of the 12 documentaries in competition. Others are Croatian Tiha K. Gudac’s “Naked Island“, “Euromaidan. Rough Cuts” by the team behind the DocuDays festival in Kiev, “Velvet Terrorists” by Slovak trio Ostrochovsky, Pekarcik and Kerekes, Hanna Polak’s “Something Better to Come” and Alina Rudnitskaya’s “Victory Day”.

All fine films with an international appeal. On top of that there is a rough cut session for documentaries and a pitching event for new projects. It’s all very professional and competent. Take a look at

http://www.triestefilmfestival.it/?page_id=7657&lang=en

Chile Doc on DocAlliance

For those of us travelling to festivals like DOKLeipzig and idfa it has been obvious that something good is happening with documentaries in Chile. Good fims are made and delegations arrive to the festivals to launch films through the ChileDoc, whose executive director Flor Rubina is interviewed for the site of DocAlliance. She says that ”information is ”power”, we an amplify it”. Later on in the fine interview, she says that ”Something that we have definitely improved in the last decade is the cinematography of the films. Visual approach, sound design, and the search for new languages to tell stories are very important to our filmmakers. As I mentioned before, diversity and eclecticism are characteristic of current Chilean documentary production. As any filmmaker, Chilean directors are looking for ways to reach global audiences through small stories that connect them with issues that any human being cares about…”

BUT check it out for yourself on DocAlliance, eight films are free for all until January 18, including the great “The Last Station”. by Cristian Soto and Catalina Vergara.

ChiChiChi – LeLeLe!

http://dafilms.com/news/2015/1/12/ChileDoc_Interview

http://dafilms.com/event/196-chiledoc/

Hommage Documentaire à ”Charlie Hebdo”

The excellent French language ”Le blog documentaire” posted today a text with the headline above. The editor C.Mal has listed (some with links to clips/trailers) films made on some of killed cartoonists (like Cabu, photo) or on the satirical cartoon genre in general. Here is his introduction text:

“Après la sidération, après la consternation et les mots qui manquent, Le Blog documentaire se raccroche aux images. Images en forme d’hommage à Charlie Hebdo. Voici quelques propositions de films sur l’hebdomadaire satirique, et sur ces dessinateurs qui nous sont si chers. Certains d’entre eux viennent d’être rediffusés sur les chaînes du service public français.”

https://cinemadocumentaire.wordpress.com/2015/01/10/hommage-documentaire-a-charlie-hebdo/

Big Award for Best Nordic Documentary

From the website of Göteborg Film Festival (January 23 – February 2): French sadomasochism, Canadian social workers and an American free zone for convicted pedophiles are all found in the eight films nominated for the Dragon Award Best Nordic Documentary 2015. The prize sum of 100,000 SEK makes this one of the Nordic countries’ largest festival award for a documentary film…

I am curious to watch Swedish Magnus Gertten’s “Every face has a Name”, a follow-up to the excellent “Harbour of Hope”. The director is “tracking down several of the people who appear in the pictures” taken in 1945, when prisoners of war and holocaust survivors arrived in Malmö, “asking them to tell their story”.

To be mentioned is also the Swedish/Danish “Pervert Park” by Frida and Lasse Barkfors, a strong and touching documentary shot in Florida Justice Transitions, “a trailer park that serves as a free zone for” convicted sex offenders.

Among the eight nominated are also Camilla Nielsson’s “Democrats” from Zimbabwe and Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The Look of Silence”, no further introduction needed – and as on many other festival occasions Oppenheimer will hold a Master Class during the festival.

The photo is a still collage of the nominated films made by the festival.

http://www.giff.se/en/artikel/nominees-best-nordic-documentary

East Beats West

I know it looks stupid and tabloid, but I have been using that headline so many times and I do believe that there is a lot of documentary talent and originality to be found in the Eastern European countries. More than in the West where many filmmakers play according to television format requirements. And there is an interest in getting together as the news from IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) in Prague demonstrates:

… We are happy to announce the final selection of projects picked for the upcoming 15th edition of East European Forum, held in Prague within the fourth East Doc Platform. The board of experts went through more than 200 applicants and eventually picked 10 projects. These will be joined by 12 more projects that took part in 2014  Ex Oriente Film workshop. Together all the filmmakers will take part in a five-day-long preparatory workshop and get ready for their public presentations. After the weekend of public project pitching they will all eventually get to the round tables as well as individual meetings, where they will face the industry professionals (TV, funds, festivals and distribution and production companies representatives) from the whole Europe and North America and negotiate support for their documentaries…

10 from 200… and I am happy to see some projects presented by people I know so well and appreciate. Like Vesela Kazakova and Mina Mileva with ”The Beast is Still Alive”, a project the two have been working on for a long time and have come back to after ”Uncle Tony, Three Fools and the Secret Service”. Equally Salomé Jashi (if you want to see how she looks – take a look at the top of this page, she is the one in the middle) presents ”The Station” after her international success with ”Bahkmaro”. Estonian Jaak Kilmi is there with a project to be produced by Latvian company Mistrus Media, it’s called ”People from Nowhere”. And of course Vitaly Manski (photo) will be there with his personal Ukranian story to be produced by Guntis Trekteris, Ego Media, Latvia.

”Sometimes it turns out that borders of political events in your country come so close to the borders of your own creative work that you have no other chose but to step over and participate. That is what happened to Oleg Sentsov, Ukrainian film director from the Crimea who is now in Russian jail. The secret services of the Russian Federation are trying to prove that Sentsov has been preparing a series of terrorist acts on the territory of the Crimea, such as explosion of the Lenin monument and the “Eternal flame”… A quote from the description of the film project by Askold Kurov, ”Release Oleg Sentsov” that will be presented in Prague as well.

http://www.dokweb.net/en/